Monday, August 24, 2015

Iraqi Army Aviation received its first batch of Mi-28NE on August 28th, 2014. They were engaged in combat quickly. On 1st February 2015, a new batch of two helicopters was delivered by Antonov An-124 transport aircraft. By April, the "Havocs" were deployed to Camp Taji, some of them were used for the training of new pilots on the type. The Iraqi Mi-28 were already seen carrying rockets launchers, but never with ATGM, so that we wondered if the Iraqis had received some. This recent video below shows the FLIR of an Iraqi Mi-28NE in combat. It uses its canon and for the fist time the launching of one 9M120 Ataka missile (AT-9 Spiral-2) can be seen.

Monday, August 17, 2015

After the election of 2012, Libya was governed by the General National Congress (GNC) headed by Muslim Brotherhood with Nouri Abusahmain as president elected in June 2013. In December, the GNC refused to hold new elections and decided an extension of its 18-month mandate for a year until the end of 2014. On February 14th, General Khalifa Haftar, a former officer under regime of Muammar Gaddafi ordered to dissolve the GNC and called for the formation of a caretaker government committee to oversee new elections with little effect on the GNC. On May 16, “Operation Dignity” was launched by General Haftar against the GNC and Islamist armed groups in Benghazi.